


once and always

by Vail



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, POV Female Character, The 'Major Character Death'(s) are canon, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 11:36:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vail/pseuds/Vail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susan is not asked to identify the bodies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	once and always

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr under [amaranthined](http://amaranthined.tumblr.com/post/28800093487).

Susan is not asked to identify the bodies. 

Uncle Harold goes instead, tells her it’s not a sight for young women, leaves alone because Aunt Alberta has not stopped crying since she heard that her son is dead. She doesn’t care for the Pevensies at all, but Eustace, as “ill-mannered” as he has been lately, was her whole world. (Susan lost her world years and years ago. She didn't cry then, but she does now.)

The train crash, she is told, was horrible. Completely unexpected, and disastrous - killing not only several passengers, but even the people waiting for them at the station. Uncle Harold is pale and shaken, places a heavy hand on her shoulder and says something vague that is meant to be comforting in his own odd way. Susan accepts the gesture, and know it doesn’t mean she should expect actual help, or love, from them.

She is alone now. (But it's been like that for awhile, hasn't it?)

—--

Sometimes she dreams of being there: standing on the platform, waving eagerly to her siblings (Lucy would wave back, with her perpetual ignoring of the ‘do not lean out the windows’ sign) as the lights of the train enter her sight, wonders when (or if) she would have realized that the headlights were getting all too close. 

Wonders if she would have felt the impact, or if death would have pulled her under before she could feel the pain. 

Sometimes her dreams are different - sometimes, right before the lights fill her eyes, a lion appears and roars, and then her brothers and sister are gone. He does not swallow them nor bite them, for there is no blood - it is only as if he has blown them away. He turns to her, eyes great and bright and knowing, his mane unruffled by the wind of the speeding train. He is blindingly golden against the drab grey stone around him, and he opens his great mouth lined with sharp teeth and the reddest tongue she ever saw -

Metal folds and crushes her bones, her ribs fall apart like glass, her lungs fill with smoke and she chokes on a name she denied out of grief.

(It is easy to forget loving something if the something never existed. He told her to love England instead, and that is what she did; did he love her yet, had she finally done right -)

And really, this dream is silly, for such lions do not exist and the lion never told her to do anything because lions cannot speak. 

It is strange she could even dream such a thing. She has not been to the zoo in many, many years, and she does not even remember seeing a lion there.

(Nobody would ever dare cage the one she had dreamed of, though. That was not a tame lion.) 

—--

She wakes and finds the cup of tea she’d left on the table the night before. The tea is cold, but she drinks it anyways because she does not have the luxury of wasting anything now. Her indulgence is lipstick, a solid swipe of blood red that she puts on every morning like armour. (A woman does not fight like a man, but she is a queen with an empty court. There is no one else to fight her battles for her, as there once were.)

Susan shakes her head, annoyed that the dream is still clinging to her. She, with her run-down room that leaks when it rains, leather shoes on the brink of falling to pieces - she is as far from royalty as one might get.

—--

Susan does not visit the graves. 

She tells Uncle Harold that she is still in mourning, she tells herself she is too busy and barely makes the rent as it is. She cannot afford the time off, or the cost of the trip. (They were buried somewhere green, as she insisted, rather than in the city graves.)

She does not admit that going will mean she has accepted their deaths. 

It won’t hurt, to let herself dream a little longer. Dream that they really were blown away somewhere safe, somewhere the water tastes so strong you could live on it, somewhere there are great golden lions that can speak the words of man. Dream that they never felt heavy weight press upon their beating hearts, never felt glass shatter upon their skin, never felt warm blood pooling out beneath their bodies.

—-- 

“It is alright if you never love me,” she tells the air. “It is alright because I love England and I love this life.” This is not entirely true, but she is speaking to someone who doesn’t really exist, so it probably doesn’t matter. “But they loved you. They loved you and your world and if I am alive here then you ought to have saved them too. They ought to be alive - there.” 

There is no reply (and she never expected one), but at night the breeze through the gaps of her window is comfortingly warm, almost like a familiar breath. 

It is December. Susan chooses not question it.


End file.
